In Memoriam: Okla Elliot

I have sad news to report. A fella I knew from my MA program at Ohio State, Okla Elliot, passed away two night ago. That he was in his mid-30s is tragic enough, but he was also one of the most energetic intellectuals and academics I've ever known. Although he was around my age, here's a list of his accomplishments:

  • Ph.D. in Holocaust and Legal Studies
  • co-author (w/ Raul Clement) of a science fiction novel The Doors You Mark are Your Own
  • Published a book of short fiction called From the Crooked Timber
  • Published a book of poetry called The Cartographer's Ink
  • Published a translation of a book of poems by German author Jurgen Becker
  • Author of a well-received book on Bernie Sanders; Bernie Sanders: The Essential Guide
  • Just finished another book on Pope Francis: Pope Francis: The Essential Guide
  • Co-edited an on-line magazine, As It Ought To Be, to which I once submitted a short article
  • Published a host of poems in various prestigious literary magazines, plus tons of reviews of books. And he also wrote opinion pieces.
  • Oh, and he was also working on a second doctorate in theology, having recently become a Catholic after life-long atheism.
I knew him only slightly from OSU and, although I  kept up to date on his facebook books, I had only interacted with him only a few times after graduation. Nonetheless, he was someone I admired, and he'll be missed. Had he had lived a few more decades, he could have become a major figure of American letters.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Genre Fantasy Bestsellers through 1990

Image
I've been studying Keith Justice's Bestseller Index , which compiles information from two separate bestseller lists -- New York Times Book Review and Publishers Weekly -- up through 1990, and the results are ridiculously fascinating. For instance, you wanna take a stab at which SFF author has the most individual books appear on a bestseller list? No, it ain't Heinlein, Clark, Herbert, or Asimov. It's not even Terry Brooks or David Eddings. No, the answer is Piers Anthony . And even if you somehow pulled that name out of thin air, I guarantee you'll never guess how truly dominate Anthony was. Up through 1990, Anthony had more than double than number of distinct bestsellers than the next most frequent bestseller, Anne McCaffrey. Whereas Anthony had an astounding  22 different books appear on a bestseller list, McCaffrey had "only" 9.** Now, caveats. These numbers need to be taken with one (or two) grains of salt. For instance, although Anthony had 22 two dis
Read more

Thoughts upon Reading Tolkien's New & Expanded LETTERS

So, I'm reading through the newly expanded version of Tolkien's Letters. One thing I hadn't properly realized is that these letters were part of Carpenter's original manuscript back in 1981, but Carpenter had to cut them due to cost. Turns out that Carpenter had a pretty keen eye on what could bear cutting -- most of this new stuff isn't terribly interesting, but I discovered a few nuggets. VINDICATED!! (Me, sorta) Naturally, whenever you read new primary material, your first instinct is to check to see if anything contradicts something you've said in print ... especially biographically. Well, I've made three big "biographical" claims, and here's my sigh of relief: Concerning my claim that, in 1954, Tolkien and colleagues contrived to create CS Lewis's academic chair at Cambridge in exchange for them nominating EM Forster for the Nobel Prize. Nothing in  Letters  supports or contradicts this. In my recent article for  Notes & Queries ,
Read more

Uncovering CS Lewis's First Religious Poem

 So, with my article's official acceptance by the journal English Text Construction , it's time to let the cat out of the bag. Using a combination of metrical analysis and biography, I've ascertained with near perfect certainty the first religious poem C. S. Lewis poem ever wrote .... a short poem, "Sweet Desire," that scholars have never previously paid any attention to. This poem is firmly datable to early 1930, probably January or February is my guess, and given the poem's subject matter, it's clearly talking about CSL's fears and intellectual trepidation about becoming a theist and abandoning atheism for good. It's basically Lewis's version of Caedmon's Hymn . The full metrical details will have to await my article, but one interesting caveat on my claims to firstness. In my peer reviewer's commentary, they recommended I contact a CSL scholar named  Charlie W. Starr, who's been working on Lewis's handwriting for quite a lon
Read more